the comfort of strangers (with apologies to mr. mcewan)

(to read the first part of this odyssey, click here)

bone tired, ravenous, with painful joints from sitting nearly four hours in an old jeepney that bounced lyk a horse on bumpy, dustry roads and aching for a cold, cold shower, we arrived in sagada at a little past one in the afternoon. the sun was at its hottest, it felt lyk summer in december. i thought by going to banaue and sagada, i would escape the heat in manille. how totally wrong was i.

to say that i was disappointed upon reaching sagada is an understatement. aside from the chilly weather, i was expecting a rustic village and sceneries straight from a botong francisco painting - people working on the rice fields, women washing clothes in the river, children playing with carabaos along muddy fields, houses built of nipa and bamboo and surrounded by vegetation. (bahay kubo comes to mind)

instead, a thriving community with rows of concrete houses reminiscent of those in affluent villages in makati and alabang greeted my wandering eyes.

well, so much for romanticizing sagada. (don't get me wrong though, sagada still has lots of charming rugged mountains, rice terraces. it's just that i thought the whole place would be covered by them.)

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undeterred, i checked in on the first inn that i saw - davey's, an old house belonging to a family of a former prominent local politician (an ally of ex president diosdado macapagal, a frequent visitor of the place. the president had pictures with the local politician proudly displayed on the walls in the lobby) that was converted into a hotel.
the room was quite small and has no bathroom or toilette. you have to go outside and share it with other guests. luckily, i was the only guest, so i had the t&b all by myself. for four hundred pesos a night, it was a bargain. the house is quiet, clean and well maintained. the bathroom is spacious and has a hot shower. the toilet is well maintained as well, with the tiles gleaming in the sunlight.
what i luv most about the house are the well polished wooden floors that reminded me of the old houses of an aunt and my grandparents, where we spent most of our summer holidays when we were kids.

(davey's lobby slash dining area. notice the well polished floors. kintab johnson yata yan.)

after taking a quick shower, i headed to the local tourism office just across the hotel to inquire about how to get to the famous caves, falls and other touristy spots in the place. i hired a guide to take me to the cave for five hundred pesos. on the way to the cave, he pointed me to the hanging coffins that are nestled on the rocky mountains near the road.

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after a twenty minute walk under the blistering heat of the two o'clock sun, we reached the entrance of the cave.

i'm not into cave exploration or more popularly known as spelunking or potholing.  going inside cold, dark, narrow (with tight openings) and slippery spaces is not my thing. (for me, spelunking is simply an analogy for going inside a mother's womb. not my thing. maybe that's the reason why i am a proud member of the third sex. but that's another story.)
anyway, caving is a magical (pardon the cliche) experience. inside, it's eerily dark, very cold and quiet except for the noise coming from the bats that were resting somewhere. the light coming from the petromax (being held by my efficient guide) was not enough to reach the ceilings where these creatures of the dark were comfortably hidden. so i wasn't able to see how these winged creatures looked like in their natural habitat. chos.

the guide showed me the different rock formations, recalling their names and explaining in details why they were named as such (not hard to figure out). there's the vagina, the large phallus, the elephant's ear, the cake, the pig pen. deeper and further down was a knee-deep spring. there were kids from the village nearby who were swimming only in their underpants, unmindful of the freezing water.

after a while, i felt claustrophobic, out of breath, so i asked the guide to take me out into the open air. the trek going up and outside of the cave was even more difficult. since i was out of shape due to my sedentary lifestyle, my knees shook and wobbled, i felt even more out of breath and dizzy. i had to ask my guide, charlie (bless him, he was so patient with me), to stop and rest several times. i had to sit for a few minutes or else i would faint.

unlike armand, my shy banaue guide, charlie, who is five years older than armand's sixteen years, is outgoing and sociable. we had drinks at night. (see next post).

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on the way back to the hotel, i passed by a coffee shop deep into the woods called gaia, named after the sun goddess. a nice, cozy, open air bar that serves really great brewed coffee. it offers a great view of the mountains, rice fields and pine trees. grace the waitress was kind enough to let me take a nap for a few minutes on its wooden benches.

after a thirty minute trek under the sun, gaia indeed is an oasis for tired feet and aching soles. aside from the great coffee and nice view, it also has stocks of books that you can borrow and browse while having coffee. nice noh?

of course, gaia also has other entries on its menu other than coffee. but since i was too tired, i did not bother to sample them. a steaming coffee was all i needed.

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for hungry stomachs, sagada offers an array of choices. the most popular restaurant is yoghurt that has italian, french, among others on its menu. but since i am starved for filipino cuisine, i settled for kusina ysagada restaurant, which has a nice, homely feel to it. paintings of local folks by local artists hang on its walls. the mango shake is to die for. no chos.
the price, though, is lyk in manille - one hundred fifty pesos for a meal, sixty pesos for the shake.

for facebook addicts, no need to worry. there's wifi connection in the restaurant, so you won't miss those very important messages posted on your wall. as i said, sagada is now a thriving, modern place with lots of hotels and houses under construction. it's so connected to the rest of the world that i felt lyk i was just a few minutes away from my temporary makati flat. chos!

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"there are no strangers in sagada. everyone knows everybody," my guide, charlie, said. indeed. when i roamed around, locals were quick to smile, talk, give me directions. even the tourists (foreigners, not locals) were friendly. i made a lot of friends in just two days.
at gaia, i befriended a german tourist, who just graduated from a university in munich and is touring southeast asia. after sagada, she and her boyfriend (nursing a cold at the hotel room when we met) will be going to cebu, bohol and then thailand. they just came from indonesia, malaysia and singapore.

these two girls, who just finished selling fresh strawberries, befriended me while i was walking on my own. they told me to take care, and suggested that i should also visit their strawberry farm.

so even if i travelled alone, i never felt lonely. the warmth of the strangers, their smiles, kind words, stories, were enough to comfort my solitude.

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but what about the lonely, cold nights? sagada becomes colder as the sun sets at around five. well, for creatures of the dark lyk me, sagada, surprisingly, has a number of bars that are full of fun loving, friendly people that are looking for more, what else, fun.

read my next post about sagada's one of a kind party experience here.
babush and happy holidays!!